Critical Error
by sandhill
Summary: How Voyager's crew brave the challenges that we face today with computers.


The illumined atmosphere of a planet shone brightly below as Voyager glided ever closer, taking up orbit. It had been another long stressful day aboard... a typical day, of course.

"Captain I'm reading that we're now close enough to the planet to do the survey work as planned."

"Engage, Paris." She casually spake the words, almost disinterested, detached. It was about the end of her shift and she was ready to clock out.

This class M planet had been picked up by their scanners days before, and the life and technology had also showed up as minimal, so they were seriously considering plans for sneaking down to pick up some dilithium without disturbing the backwards prewarp culture living below.

"Bee-bump." The view screen twirtled. A pop up screen emerged displaying the words, "Update 10.3.3 is now available, would you like to continue?"

"Scratch that for now. I haven't asked Bilana if this one's worth it, yet." Janeway ordered.

"Aye-aye, captain." Paris moved the cursor down and exited the pesky box. "Listing 8 degrees." Harry Kim acknowledged. "It really shouldn't disrupt steering, like that. That's very inconvenient." Jane Way wrinkled up her nose, trying not to sneer. "Not to mention annoying-"

"Be-bump." Another pop up window emerged covering the view screen. "Please insert your Apple ID and password."

"Ahw no!" Paris's jaw dropped at the computer's incredulity.

"Now listing by 32 degrees." Harry Kim interrupted, concern ringing clearly in his voice. "I can't raise the shields with that dialog box up!"

"Take us out of that trajectory, now!" Jane Way ordered.

"I can't!" Paris panicked. "You have to insert your Apple ID before I can get control of the helm!"

"Oh shoot! I never use that thing." Jane Way practically ran from the bridge to her office and finally returning, punched the code into the keyboard.

It had almost sounded like a vent had come on, as everyone on the bridge finally exhaled. The helm visibly jerking back away from the planet so the ship could right itself from the destructive trajectory into the planet's atmosphere.

Harry's shoulders noticeably slumped now, as he tried to relax. Janeway plopped down onto her chair, and sat back placing a hand to her forehead. "Harry, could you do a few more of those scans now to..." She breathed in again.

"Determine the best insertion point for the away team?" He offered.

"Yes-yes, that... do, now."

Harry's fingers danced across the display of his station, but a notification banner ran across the main view screen interrupting the search results. "Bee-bump."

"Windows update is now ready to install. We're working hard to keep your machine working at peak performance." The screen now said. Jane Way's jaw dropped this time, almost giving one of those Donald Rumsfeld like baffled looks. "What?"

"It's not letting me exit without scheduling another time to update." Paris swiveled around to ask.

"How long do you think this away mission... Never mind. What's the furthest out we can set it? We don't wanna get caught again in the middle of something like we did just now with the other one."

"I'd say a week." Paris guessed nonchalantly, rotoring through the wheel of options.

"We can always update anytime between now and then, too, I think." Harry suggested. "I mean, if an more opportune moment arises."

"Janeway to engineering."

"Yes captain. Bilana speaking."

"We've got another Windows developer update asking to install. If we set it out for a week would we be able to go in and update anytime between now and then, or are we committed to that specific time?"

"Theoretically, yes captain, you would be able to do that." Bilana answered.

"Very well. Over and out." Jane Way dismissed. The com closed.

"Proceed with what we said."

"Aye-aye captain." Paris selected the "Update in one week" option.

As soon as that window closed, a banner notification temporarily covered the screen.

"No, I don't need to know yet what the temperature will be on this planet today." Harry shook his head in frustration. "I thought I had disabled those!"

"Bing! Bing-bing-bing!" Push notifications covered the screen now.

"Aahhh!" Jane Way fumed out loud, but then gritted her teeth in an attempt not to yell. "I thought I told you to not CC unnecessarily, or leave notifications turned on for any of the committee group chats on the main view screen."

Just before Harry could turn them off 7 of 9's reply popped up that replying to all was an inefficient way of communicating, as it tied up everyone unnecessarily.

"I did!" His fingers franticly danced across his work station display terminal. "I remember saving those preferences."

"Oh, they must have had some bugs; and everything was reset back to factory settings." Paris chimed in, partly trying to cover for his friend, but honestly stating the facts. "The app developers will probably come up with another patch before the week is over."

The turbo lift doors hissed and opened as 7 of 9 briskly stepped onto the bridge. "Captain, I need to bring something to your attention."

"I don't have time for this right now." Jane Way jerked down on her uniform coat, straightening out the wrinkles with a huff as she sat back in her chair again.

"But captain, the scanner equipment service term agreements have changed, yet again, and they need your personal endorsement, as captain, before we can continue using it." She handed Janeway her data pad.

"I don't have time for that either." She glowered miserably. "30 pages?! 30 pages?! I can't read all this crap. How am I supposed to know what all this means. You'd need an technical writing degree to understand it all."

"I believe you mean a mechanical engineer's degree-"

"Zap it!"

7 of 9's mouth froze, then slowly shut quietly, almost mechanically, you might say.

"Look at this Privacy Statement: 'Periodically we may monitor the scanners remotely in order to ensure quality service.' Service my #$! " Janeway swore up and down.

Paris swiveled his chair back around and sniggered.

Harry's face contorted as he tried not to burst into laughter.

"Are you ok Ensign Kim? 7 of 9 enquired.

"Oh, uh just my sinuses." Harry snorted a few times like he was sucking snot to clear his throat.

"Maybe you should go to sickbay."

"Oh, no-no I'm fine. Nothing that can't wait until my shift is up." Mentally though, he tucked that wildcard into the back of his mind to use for later in case things on the bridge got extremely boring. He could always say, "Hey captain, I think I'll take 7 of 9's suggestion and go to sickbay and get checked out really quick if that's ok." and chances were if things were really boring she would allow it, and who knows he might run into some friend along the way to or back from sickbay and they might carry on 'watercooler talk' for a second or two. It could be something about sports, or maybe a reality tv show. He thought to himself he'd have to settle on something good before going.

"There. I just signed over all my rights. I hope they're happy... bet they can't even remotely access these stupid scanners all the way from the Alpha Quadrant anyhow." Janeway sulked. Secretly every time she would agree to such terms she felt a little less like a captain in control of her own vessel, and more like a castaway controlled by her gadgets.

Everything was finally quiet and peaceful again now, after the turbolift door hissed closed, and 7 of 9 disappeared, then randomly, Janeway continued her rant as if she'd never stopped. "Might as well bend over and let them look up my-"

"Bee-bump." Another intrusive window popped up temporarily blocking the screen which read:

"Your carrier settings have changed. Please agree to update."

"Raaaar!" The sound that erupted from Janeway didn't even sound human anymore Paris noticeably jumped in his seat.

"We're not even a carrier... it's a regular starship. This is beyond ridiculous!" And before Harry could correct her on what "carrier settings" meant, she continued, "I'm going to save my captain's log and finish this shift. Just agree to the update. If anyone needs me I'll be in the captain's office."

The door to her office, which was directly off the bridge, hissed opened and closed behind her leaving an emotional wake behind her as immense and quiet as the vacuum of space itself.

Paris shot a look back at Harry and raised an eyebrow. "Decaf?"

Harry just shook his head chuckling, and pecked away at his work station console, when a churtle alerted him the comm was open. "..Harry, uhm... my pad isn't synching for some reason. Could you come in here and fix it?"

"Aye aye, captain."

It took a few minutes to realize that the pad settings weren't granting the cloud permission to access or back up information on the device. "There ya go."

"I don't know why these things have become such a pain." Janeway lamented. "I have to punch in my code every time now, since it no longer recognizes my fingerprint."

"Oh, that's probably the protective cover-"

"But, we need them in case of turbulence-"

"Right." They both agreed at the same time.

It was very common to see a crew member dropping their device if Voyager made a sudden defense maneuver, or when the ship shook when the shields were hit by phaser fire. Really, though, it was common to see someone drop a device even during downtime, so having a case was mandatory.

The doctor had given seminars on the importance of cleaning the cases every so often, but still crew members would forget at times, then have to go to sickbay for easily preventable illnesses. He had also lectured on the importance of winding down at night away from the devices, so the body could develop a natural sleepng rhythm, but many of the crew still retained a screen tan and had trouble sleeping.

The next day Janeway found herself alone in the conference room. They had scheduled a meeting, but it was now time and no one had yet shown up. "Where is everybody?" She wondered aloud. As if on que several hologram images of each of the ship's officers began to blink on an off as Skype music played.

"Doop-doop-de-doop-deep-do-doop."

"Ahw! Do I have to answer all of these?" Janeway raged, getting up and looking like Vanna White as she touched screens to activate the data pads.

"Ding-ding-ding... ding."

"Why are you guys Skypeing in? Couldn't you show up in person?"

They each sighed, and tried to come up with excuses, even though traveling across the ship would have only taken five minutes, at most.

"Nevermind!-Nevermind. Just get on with it."

"Captain, I sent the file you requested in PDF format-" Harry began, but was cut off.

"What? You know I can't open those. I don't have the newest version of Acrobat Reader yet, and we agreed, 'everything will be sent in-' " she began to quote something from a previous meeting.

"Oh! Yeah. I'm sorry. I'll just have to convert it back and resend it, sorry."

"And zip it... Remember we're trying to conserve data charges, since we're roaming." She added.

"Captain, allow me to draw your attention to this little matter." Paris began to produce something on the screen for them all using Mozilla Firefox, but it wouldn't load.

"Ohh... 'this page is unable to load. Please try again later.' " Janeway read aloud. "Guess their too busy trying to be political to keep their browser in good working order. Tom, Tom just use Explorer."

"Is Chrome ok?"

"No! No, don't waste our time."

"Ok, here-goes." Paris typed the address in wrong and a Bing search popped up. Everyone sighed. Torrez muted her mic a moment so she could swear a few times.

"Torrez, just go ahead and give your report while Tom loads his, and he can listen in."

Bilana's face gave all the emotion and body language of a conversation but no one could hear a word she was saying.

"I can't hear anything." Tom was the first to admit.

"Bilana... Bilana, we're not getting any audio it seems." Janeway interrupted.

"...there. That should do the trick." They all heard her say, but ten times louder because everyone but Tom had tried to raise the volume.

"Aahh! Lower your volume! Lower your volume!"

She did, and they all had gradually figured out what had happened, but nobody said anything and they all just toughed it out barely catching anything she said, but not wanting to admit it. It was very quiet and awkward.

Just then the hologram doctor entered the room. He seemed strange.

"Captain, it appears that my Adobe Flash player is no longer up to date."

"True, true. And you do seem to only be running in 32 bit."

The doctor flickered a few more times all static like, then produced a phaser. "Captain, I'm out of control! Watch out!"

Janeway dove and tumbled behind a chair as the yellow phaser beam scorched the back of a seat. Her mind raced, "I knew I shouldn't have opened that email from an alleged Nigerian prince wanting to send me money. I bet I accidentally downloaded a computer virus from the Quaeson." She sprinted forward, rushing past the doctor, pressing his mobil emitter to force a hard shut down, and then walked out of the room in one swoop. It was graceful, it was epic.

Exiting the confrence room she half fell back against the wall a moment to catch her breath. An alarm on her wrist went off, as she reached for her datapad so she could take a selfy, and post to Facebook to brag about her self important accomplishment to all of those people online who she never met, didn't know well, or really even talked to anyway.

"wha?" She asked no one in particular, then glanced at her smart watch.

"Dangerous level of exertion. A person with your body fat index ratio should not..."

Janeway huffed, and skipped out of the rest, then livestreamed on Facebook. "Hi guys. Just survived an attack on my life. Whoo!" She held up a clenched fist and shook it for emphasis.

Her hair was deshevled, and Paris, Kim, and others began to react, send emoticons, and leave comments.

"I was about to text you to check on you," someone said. Another commented an funny cat meme with a phaser, then "lol!"

Nelix accidentally commented, something totally unrelated, on this post, instead of another post he was trying to respond to on another person's wall, and a few people criticized him for it. In retaliation, he deactivated his account, but then was back on in a few hours trying to guage what people wanted for dinner. "Corndogs?" It got like 50 likes.

Meanwhile as everyone was distracted by their devices and social entertainment, the ship, having been left unattended in driverless starship mode, made a decision of it's own to begin heading straight towards the star of this galaxy.

As it streaked off into the night sky, the pre warp society below marveled at what appeared to them above as a shooting star. And that's how the hashtag "corndogs" started trending in the Delta Quadrant, folks.


End file.
